Amid General Election Hype…
Are ferrets gaining popularity?
One story that has made headlines is (as The Telegraph puts it): “An animal rescue centre has refused to return a lost dog to the woman who owned it for 11 years after staff sold it on to another family”. The Daily Mail ran with the story also, using the headline: ‘Pet rescue centre refuses to hand back lost dog to widow, saying: 'Sorry, we sold her'’. According to the report from the Telegraph: “Liz Hiorns, 72, searched for days after the Jack Russell, named Penny, went missing from her farm near Warwick. On the advice of a friend she contacted a local vet who dealt with strays and discovered Penny had been sold by an animal rescue centre for £80 to a couple living 30 miles away. Mrs Hiorns, who had the dog since it was a puppy, asked staff at the centre to tell her who had bought Penny, but they refused because it was ''against data protection'' laws.”
This week, the media also featured a case of animal cruelty – a horse trader from Amersham who lost his appeal against his convictions. According to the article on the BBC “James Gray was jailed for six months last June for leaving the animals to starve to death at Spindle Farm in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. His wife Julie Gray, 42, and daughters Jodie, 27, and Cordelia, 21, were also unsuccessful in their appeals at Aylesbury Crown Court.”
Farmer’s Weekly reported another development in the badger culling issue in Wales in a news piece entitled ‘Campaigners in last ditch bid to thwart badger cull’. According to this: “the Badger Trust has launched a last-minute bid to block the cull of badgers in Wales” and “trust chairman David Williams has now claimed the judicial review judgement could have implications for other wildlife.”
Finally, this week Pete Wedderburn’s blog has picked up on two news pieces: the latest, ‘When good herbivores turn bad…’ refers to the recent revelation that water voles have been spotted eating frogs legs. Within this Pete writes that: “It’s rare for animals to contradict their nutritional background in this way: herbivores generally remain herbivores, and carnivores never willingly stop eating meat. But perhaps these classifications are more man-made than absolute. Cats are obligate carnivores, but they do graze on grass from time to time. Sheep are grass-munching herbivores, but if you’ve ever seen a ewe lambing, you’ll have seen her chomping happily on her own placenta once the delivery is over. Evolution is working away as we speak. Hedgehogs that run away from oncoming cars rather than uselessly curling up into a stationary ball are surviving to breed. Perhaps Water Voles with a taste for flesh are producing more progeny than their more abstemious brothers and sisters.”
Another blog of his asks the question ‘Ferrets: the new celebrity handbag pets?’. He begins this piece by stating “A report published recently suggested that ferret ownership is on the increase, especially amongst female owners, after Paris Hilton was spotted cuddling her pet ferret in public.”
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
